Toronto police sweep through pot dispensaries as part of citywide crackdown on illegal trafficking

Toronto police raided a slew of marijuana dispensaries Thursday afternoon, carrying out a citywide crackdown on businesses suspected of distributing the drug illegally.

Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu said officers executed several simultaneous search warrants starting at noon Thursday at “various locations that have been identified as trafficking in marijuana outside of the Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulation.”

Sidhu declined to specify how many properties were raided. She said Toronto police chief Mark Saunders will announce the number and location of searches — along with specific charges laid and products seized — at a news conference at police headquarters Friday morning.

Tyler Anderson / National PostPolice officers put up a police line at S.W.E.D. Dispensary during last month’s raids.

Searches were carried out throughout various pockets of the city, including Kensington Market, Church Street and Danforth Ave., where two workers cleaned the remnants of a glass door shattered in one of the